Unfortunately, it is much easier to copy a great man's imperfections than
those qualities which give him his greatness. Too often, also, are their
defects mistaken for their marks of distinction,--vice for virtue,--and
copied by the young, who have not the ability to imitate their greatness.
"General Grant smokes!"
"_President_ Grant drinks!"
These two sentences, with the lamentable fact of their probable truth,
have made more smokers of young men in the military and civil walks of
life than all other texts in the English language. General or President
Grant is not responsible for the lack of brains in the community, to be
sure; but if "great men" will persist in bad habits, young men should be
taught the difference between them and their virtues, and cautioned to
shun them, or their bark will be stranded far out of sight of their
desired haven,--the port of their ambition,--and nothing but a worthless
wreck remains to tell what better piloting might have done for them. The
voyage ended cannot be re-commenced.
A student of medicine, in New York, brought a bottle of liquor to our
room. I told him where that bottle would carry him.
"Pshaw! It's only a pint of wine. Dr. Abernethy, the great English
surgeon, bought one hundred and twenty-six gallons at once, and he did not
_die a drunkard_," was his contemptuous reply.
"But you must remember that Abernethy lived in the days of _good_ port
wine, when every man had something to say of the sample his hospitality
produced of his popular beverage. The doctor, who never was intemperate,
was very hospitable.
"'Honest John Lloyd!'--what an anomaly when applied to a rum-seller--was a
great wine merchant of London, a particular friend of Abernethy's, and of
all great men of his day, who loved wines and brandies.
"One day I went to Lloyd's just as Dr. Abernethy left.
"'Well,' said Mr. Lloyd, 'what a funny man your master is.'
"'Who?' said I.
"Why, Mr. Abernethy. He has just been here and paid me for a pipe of wine,
and threw down a handful of notes and pieces of paper, with fees. I wanted
him to stop to see if they were all right, and said, 'Some of those fees
may be more than you think, perhaps.' 'Never mind,' said he; 'I can't
stop; you have them as I took them,' and hastily went his way.
"In occasional habits we may most safely recollect that faults are no less
faults (as Mirabeau said of Frederick the Great) because they have the
shadow of a great name; and we believe that no good man would desire to
leave a better expiation of any weakness than that it should deter others
from a similar error."
In fact, the doctor was opposed to drunkenness, and also gluttony,
although he himself "was a good liver," as the following anecdote will
show:--
A wealthy merchant who resided in the country had been very sick, and
barely recovered, when, from the same cause, he was again threatened with
a return of the like disease.
"I went to see him at home, and dined with him. He seemed to think that if
he did not drink deeply, he might _eat like a glutton_," said the doctor.
"Well, I saw he was at his old tricks again, and I said to him, 'Sir, what
would you think of a merchant, who, having been prosperous in business and
amassed a comfortable fortune, went and risked it all in what he knew was
an imprudent speculation?'
"Why, sir," he exclaimed, "I should say he was a great ass."
"'Nay, then, thou art the man,' said Abernethy."
The leopard does not change his spots. For the truth of this read the life
and fall of Uniac.
O, it is a fearful thing to become a drunkard.
The habit once acquired is never gotten entirely rid of. It sleeps--it
never dies, but with the death of the victim.
Young men, avoid the first drink. Never take that first fatal glass; thus,
and only thus, are you safe from a drunkard's grave, and the curse
entailed upon your progeny.